Biometrics may be understood as the process of differentiation between people based on intrinsic physical and/or behavioral characteristics. Biometric identification may therefore utilize characteristics such as fingerprints, eye retinas, irises, facial patterns, hand measurement, vocal patterns, signature, gait and typing patterns. These characteristics may be recorded as pieces of data through numerical interpretation allowing for the storage and comparison of data for identification purposes.
Biometric devices may be prone to defeat however, by presenting a non-genuine article to the device that may, for all intensive purposes, mimic the original. For example, with respect to fingerprint scanners, one may present an artificial finger containing a desired fingerprint, which may then be accepted as sufficiently similar to the original because the features forming the fingerprint are similar even though the substrate or tissue which the features are carried on are not the same.